“I say, below there!” called Don Carlos, in a louder voice. “Wake up, you! Where’s Fingal?”
“Ahoy, don!” bellowed Bob, trying his utmost to imitate the raucous tones of Fingal’s voice. “Bring the general down a minute!”
Bob’s imitation was fairly good, but not good enough to deceive the keen ears of Don Carlos. With a yell of alarm, the don sprang ashore.
“This way, general!” he shouted; “hurry! There’s something wrong here.”
There followed a crash, a rattling slide of some object over the sloping deck of the boat, then a shrill volley of oaths.
Bob rushed up the ladder and looked out of the hatch.
The general was a little man, and he carried a prodigious sword and wore a pair of immense spurs on his cavalry boots. As near as Bob could judge, from what he saw, the general had tried to leap ashore and his spurs had caught in one of the guy ropes. Instead, therefore, of leaping, he fell in a heap, and had clattered and banged along the deck until he was caught and held between the side of the boat and a pile that formed part of the wharf.
The general was seeking in vain to extricate himself from his difficulties. Every time he tried to get up, his boots would slip on the rounded plates, and he would sit down on the sharp points of his spurs.
The air was fairly blue in his immediate vicinity, and a perfect bedlam of epithets went up from him. Don Carlos, seeing Bob in the top of the tower, guessed rightly that the prisoners had released themselves in some manner. The don did not return to assist the general, but danced about on the bank, tossing his arms frantically and shouting for him to make haste.